the smells of los angeles

Now that it's not so smoggy any more, I'm struck by the way smells linger in the desert without rain to knock them down. Passing through an intersection I smelled the sawdust smell of woodworking, but from recent rather than active construction. Parks smelled of flowering trees no longer in bloom. Steve Lubanski's bike shop had that oily bike shop smell outside it as well as in. There's not much of the fragrant native desert flora around in the built-up areas to compete, either, so it's easy to pick things out. Fascinating.